Bitcoin (BTC) hit its highest price in US dollar terms in 2025 on Friday and broke a new record against the British pound as enthusiasm for a new era of crypto-friendly US government rises ahead of the Donald Trump’s inauguration next week.
BTC surpassed $105,000 during the US session, rising 5.2% over the past 24 hours and leading the broad-based crypto benchmark CoinDesk 20 higher. Among CoinDesk’s 20 constituents, only NEAR and Litecoin’s LTC kept pace with Bitcoin’s gains, while Solana (SOL) and Ethereum’s ether (ETH) lagged with 3% advances. XRP saw a 4% decline, moving away from its all-time highs following a massive, market-leading rally earlier this week.
Crypto-related stocks are also on the rise. MicroStrategy (MSTR), the largest company holding BTC, rose 7% on the day, while exchange giant Coinbase (COIN) gained 4.5%. MARA Holdings led the gains among major Bitcoin miners, up 13%.
This is quite a turnaround from earlier in the week, when a market sell-off sent bitcoin plunging below $90,000, with fears growing of a deeper pullback. Since then, however, BTC has rallied 17%, first as investor concern over Wednesday’s US CPI inflation report passed and then as attention turned to speculation about Donald Trump’s potential crypto actions following his January 20 inauguration.
Overcoming last week’s local high of $102,000, BTC also broke its multi-week downtrend to lower highs to target its all-time high price from December, said Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy.
“Now $108,000 is the near-term target resistance,” he said in an X article. “Lots of reasons to be optimistic.”
Strong Bitcoin ETF Flows
Spot Bitcoin ETFs combined saw net inflows of $1.381 billion over the past two days, reversing the four-day streak of outflows, according to data from Farside Investors. Spot Ether ETFs attracted $166 million in inflows, their biggest day in more than a month.
With the markets closed on Monday, today is the last trading session on traditional markets before Trump’s inauguration.
BlackRock’s Ishares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) saw nearly $1 billion in trading volume in just over the first hour of the session, posting the fourth-largest volume among all U.S. ETFs and surpassing Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF (VOO) with nearly ten times its assets under management, according to Barchart data.
All eyes are on Trump
The biggest upcoming catalyst will be Trump’s inauguration ceremony on Monday, and crypto investors are expecting a dramatic change from the new president. Trump promised on the campaign trail to position the United States as a leader in crypto, including creating a national bitcoin stockpile, in stark contrast to the crackdown and enforcement of previous years.
Bloomberg reported Thursday that Trump is planning an executive order to elevate digital assets to a “national priority” and create an advisory council made up of industry members for policy recommendations.
The odds of the United States establishing a bitcoin reserve have risen sharply over the past few days, with traders at Polymarket giving a 38% chance that Trump will achieve this within the first 100 days of his presidency.
“As we close out the final week of the Biden presidency, the technical picture remains very constructive for BTC,” John Glover, chief investment officer at crypto lender Ledn, said in an emailed note.
“The only thing that could cause a significant correction downside is if Trump fails to follow through on his plans to ease regulatory policy around digital assets and start building BTC cash holdings,” he said. -he added. “Recent headlines indicate he is serious about making this a priority in his first 100 days,”
Glover’s analysis using wave theory predicts that Bitcoin will reach $128,000 in the coming months after its intermediate 5-wave pattern, completing its larger 3-wave in its uptrend. According to wave theory, market trends occur in five waves, three of which represent the main trend and the rest constitute retracements.
Breaking above the record high of $108,000 is key, Glover said, and there remains a small chance of a retracement of recent lows of $90,000. However, this scenario is becoming more and more unlikely, he added.
